Category: civic engagement

Yesterday I wrote about misgivings I have in connecting civic engagement too closely with the formal workings of government.

My main concern is that citizen-generated activity could tend to be stifled and bureaucratized by creating some kind of “office of civic engagement” or an “engagement czar” (this is akin to President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives). However, with the right kind of leadership, and support at the highest levels, such an office could have a hugely beneficial effect on the quality of our public life. In the end, I support such a move.

But there are other dangers, too. These have to do with politics (as opposed to government). The main problem here is that politics doesn’t know what to make of civic engagement.

This is a big problem for those of us who labor in this field — how do we let elected officials and other policy makers know about the results of public dialogue? How can we suggest it best be integrated into governance? No one has yet answered this question, from my observations.

(I wrote a report for the National Issues Forums Institute describing the efforts of one member of Congress to use citizen engagement as a way of gaining community knowledge.)

The Obama-Biden transition office is in the midst of a series of “community meetings” on health care reform. Seeing how these play out and how they are reported on is illuminating.

News coverage has chiefly used two frames. One frame is the “listening session” frame, in which the meetings are portrayed as an informal chance for HHS Secretary-designate Tom Daschle to gain first-hand knowledge of people’s concerns with health care. The other frame is the “political ammunition” frame, in which this effort represents the opening moves in an effort to build a grassroots, mobilizeable base on which to rely when the health care reform fight begins to get ugly. Politico’s coverage today is a good example.

Each of these frames is patently politics-as-usual: Citizens are either being asked to give testimony in a hearing, or they are being whipped into a frenzy so they can be mobilized.

Certainly, the former perception is preferable to the latter. But the default position for political journalists is skepticism — it’s easy for this effort to come off as just a campaign salvo.

Even so, there’s another area where the effort can fall short, and that’s in the organizing. It is, after all, a political office that is responisble for planning and administering these community meetings. Politics is fast-moving and in its day-to-day workings it relies heavily on doing what’s beeen shown to work in the past. And so, for all its talk of being a “different” way to engage citizens on the health care debate, when you look at the community meeting discussion guide, it looks very much like a meeting designed to elicit sound bites and quotes. (To be fair, this is the participant guide; I have not been able to find a way to access the moedrator’s guide. If someone has a copy, please let me know.)

One of the great strengths of community dialogues when it comes to policy-making is that they provide a forum in which citizens can wrestle with the trade offs and downsides of various plans and approaches. But people typically need to be pushed to have such conversations. This is only natural — but when the reluctance is overcome, dramatic new insights can arise.

For civic engagement to be “used” most effectively, it needs to be organized in a way that recognizes its value. In order for that to happen, existing mindsets — those of journalists and those of political staffers — will need to be overcome. This is a tall order, but it is doable.

One way to help is for the “civic participation” community to continue to be as involved and engaged with the Obama-Biden transition office as it has been.

Many friends and colleagues have worked hard on something called the Agenda For Strengthening America’s Democracy. Put simply, this is an effort by an broad array of people in the “civic participation” field to lay out a set of principles that could guide the Obama administration moving forward. They see this as a reasonable thing to do because President-Elect Obama has been a proponent of civic engagement. Indeed, his transition office is already implementing plans for large-scale dialogue about health care reform.

“Public engagement” or “citizen engagement” is more than just getting people to vote and to volunteer in their communities. Government must also engage citizens in the policy decisions that affect their lives.

Our nation is at a unique point in its history. We face great, unprecedented challenges, but we also have remarkable opportunities for change. Now is the time to come together to advance the ideals that we all share.

There are many meaningful and exciting ways the new administration can build on the citizen engagement it began in the election campaign and carry it into governance.

A new civic engagement agenda signals a new way of governing.

I agree completely — yet I am torn. On the one hand, I am a strong believer in the wisdom of citizens when it comes to difficult policy issues, and I equally strongly believe that political leaders ought to develop mechanisms for listening to this wisdom.

However, I have equally strong misgivings about the formalization of “civic engagement” mechanisms within government. To the extent that civic engagement efforts are mandated and (worse) bureaucratized — I worry that they work against the very spirit of citizen participation.

The Agenda has three main thrusts. It calls for the creation of a White House-level “Office of Civic Engagement,” for the government to institute “large scale dialogue” efforts, and for legislative changes to make voting easier and implement a grab-bag of electoral reforms that have been kicking around for some time (instant runoff voting, proportional representation, etc.).

But, to my mind, civic participation’s power lies in its extra-governmental (and even extra-institutional) status. Small groups of citizens working together to solve problems is far different from organized “discussion groups” whose objective is to generate “input” for “policy makers.”

Still, according to the talking points:

A healthy democracy needs the capacity to involve its citizens in key decisions. Government cannot be left to leaders, experts, and pundits with the public only weighing in on election day. People from all walks of life should be encouraged to wrestle with tough questions, seek common ground, and develop and articulate their views. Policymakers should see themselves as part of this larger process, not as a world unto themselves.

I agree with that, too.

And so I am left wondering what to do. I support my friends on the broad aims, but I differ on some of the key strategies.

One friend whom I wrote asking how he might respond to this struggle said he shared my misgivings about turning participation into an institution, yet says that, “At the same time, I think we have to try. We face too many monumental challenges to not try everything we can to engage as many people as possible in the hard work we face.”

My friend makes a very good point. What will engage the greatest number of people, in substantive ways, without ultimately driving them away? That’s the question I am wrestling with.